


Wandering Women

by The_Real_Squoose



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26196814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Real_Squoose/pseuds/The_Real_Squoose
Summary: "You don’t really think Bunny was a wastoid, do you?” I said.“Hmm?""That’s what some people are saying, right? But he was--there’s so many stories."“You’re obtuse,” Judy said. She straightened, then, and I realized she’d only made the shoe excuse to steal a moment alone with me. “I didn’t stop to talk about Bunny.”I watched the group shuffle farther away from us, taking all their secrets with them.~~~Or, the Greek class students and the events at Hampden College through the eyes of outsiders. Plus some drama.
Relationships: Judy Poovey/Original Female Character (pre-relationship)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Wandering Women

* * *

I don’t know exactly what day the searches had begun, I’d been sick and locked up in my room for days, but it had been the strangest scene to reemerge to. Not the volunteers themselves, that hadn’t been my first experience, but to the girls gathered in the hall all whispering about the people who had come, about the FBI showing up, about what rumors they’d heard about this or that. 

"They say he was part of some big drug ring in New York," said a girl with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

I stood with one hand bracing me on the cool wall, listening with interest. They were all too invested to notice me lurking, heads bent together like a team huddling before a match.

"Nuh-uh. With those clothes? With his family? Big money, he wouldn't need to," said Julie.

A blonde cradling a disposable cup said, "I heard it was Philly, not New York."

" _With those clothes_.” Julie flapped a hand. “He got all these new suits not too long ago, and Lisa said he bought them with drug money."

"Lisa doesn't know anything."

“You look like a zombie,” Judy said, startling me. I turned around to find her leaning her hip against the wall, hair pulled back and bags under her eyes that told me she’d been up late too many nights again. “Girl. Drink some water.”

“Do not talk to me, I have a killer headache,” I said, only half-joking. I couldn’t stop squinting, the light like daggers to my eyes from all angles. “What’s going on?”

“Someone’s disappeared,” she said. “The Colonel, you remember him?”

“Bunny?”

“Uh-huh. I’ve got something for your head. Are you going to pass out on me?"

"Mmm. Possibly."

"Give me ten minutes to tell you the story, then you can die."

"I am but a Victorian child with influenza," I said, and the moment I turned to follow her, locked eyes with a rather squirrely-looking man at the end of the hall. Or, thought I had, without my glasses it was hard to tell, but the way Richard hunched his shoulders and ducked his head told me he was avoiding my gaze. Judy searched the bag over her shoulder and ducked into her room without notice.

I shifted closer as he did, hovering by Judy’s doorway. “Are you alright?”

He hesitated, hand on his doorknob. “What?”

“Are you--you know, I just heard. About your friend.” The look on his face drew me short, his jaw tight, some unsourceable intensity in his eyes. “He was your friend, right?”

That was a stupid question. Richard and Bunny were both part of that exclusive Classics student circle. His expression tightened further, though he seemed intent on coming off as casual, and I pinned down one source of that look. Not grief, but annoyance.

He wasn’t as bad as the others in refusing to associate with the general student populace, perhaps because he was housed with us, but in the few interactions I’d had with him he always stayed guarded and apart. Attitude I could handle by the bucketload. My tolerance for people who held the true belief that they were better than others was limited. But Judy liked him, and his friend was gone, so despite my exhaustion I pooled my energy into putting on the kindest face possible. 

“Yes,” he said stiffly. “I’m fine.” And then, like an afterthought, “And you?”

“I’m alright. I’m alive.” I did the jazz hands that always made Judy smile, but his frown only grew deeper. “Look, I’m not trying to pry. I really did just want to check on you. I’m sure they’ll find your friend soon.”

He stared for a long moment. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” I didn’t know what else to say, I felt terribly embarrassed for even having tried to ask after him. Judy had introduced us at the start of the year and he’d been more charming than anything, then a few weeks in I’d bumped into him in the hall and the air had grown awkward. The next interaction and every one after had an aftertaste of uncomfortable inferiority. “Well. Good afternoon.”

“Goodbye.”

“Richard!” a man called, a flash of lanky pale limbs and bright red hair appearing, and I took it as my cue to leave. 

Judy looked up from her desk as I closed her door firmly. “You can leave it open. Was that Richard?”

“Yeah. That was. . .strange.” I cracked her door open again, hearing Francis say, “ _Up, up. They’re waiting.”_

“Did he give you that look?”

I looked at her blankly and sat on the edge of her bed. She tossed a pill bottle at my chest and sat on her desk chair, arm over the back. Judy lowered her chin and gave a dramatic impression of Richard’s intense look.

“That’s the one,” I said, slightly relieved. “Normally I’d call that condescending, but I think he’s--”

“Traumatized? Probably. He’s been avoiding me.”

She surprised an airy laugh out of me. A spike of pain shot through my forehead in response, and Judy clucked sympathetically and moved a glass of water off her desk, holding it out to me. Still, her bluntness always made me smile, and she knew it, her grin sharp.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the glass and setting it on her bedside table.

_Thank you for the painkillers, for checking up on me, for always being there, for always being one step ahead of getting me what I need._ Sickness made me more sentimental than ever, consumed by my thoughts. Normally, it was easy to be normal around Judy, to distribute my affection between my friends without favoritism, but then there were these moments where she caught me off guard. Where I felt more for her than I should.

I struggled with the childproof cap of the bottle, my hands numb, and she moved to sit beside me on the bed, sweeping it away, uncapping it, and tipping pills into my palms with the smooth efficiency of an action taken a thousand times before.

“So,” she started. “You missed a lot.” But Judy’s overview of the situation was short and quickly replaced by her Greek class student speculations. We moved to my room as the painkillers started making my eyelids droop, and I dug out a pack of cigarettes for her while she paced between my desk and the door. “Those twins are so weird, and so close. Always hanging around each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something there--”

_“Judy._ That’s gross.”

She laughed. “I’m just saying! Richard’s alright though, and so was Bunny. Oh, he did have sex with Mona though.”

“Isn’t he dating Marion? Or,” I paused, feeling slightly sick, Judy’s past tense ringing in my ears, and finished slowly, “wasn’t he?”

“I meant Richard did,” Judy said impatiently, “and I kind of thought he was a dick for that but like, I’m also pretty sure he wasn’t totally there because of that Demerol I gave him--”

“Demerol? Why the hell did you give him Demerol?”

“He was in a _state,_ Louise, I’m telling you.”

She stopped abruptly, all her momentum and energy grinding to a halt. We were alone now, though faint voices still carried through the door, and all at once Judy seemed to collapse in on herself. She sank onto the edge of my bed, all mussed up with the sheets at the bottom, and stared blankly at the opposite wall. “God. Our age. He was our age and now missing. And why did I give Richard those pills, I probably made it all worse--you know, he’s been worried about the Colonel all this time. Jesus.”

I hadn’t known what to say. “It wasn’t your fault. Maybe next time, tell someone what a pill does before you let them have it? But the Colonel--Bunny--he’s probably just run off somewhere for a little while, right? He’s fine.”

Judy looked at me, her gaze piercing, searching. “I guess.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” I said earnestly.

A moment passed, then several. Judy pushed me down onto my back. “You should sleep. I swear you look worse than before.”

I chuckled, heart in my throat, and she laid beside me, our shoulders pressed together in the narrow space. “I’m not that tired.”

“I can bore you to sleep.”

“With your tales? Never.”

“I’ll tell you about the Pythagorean Theorem. _A-squared plus B-squared equals C-squared!_ ” The last bit she sang.

I giggled, rolling my head toward her. “My math teacher in middle school had a song for everything.”

“Oh yeah? What did it sound like.”

“Nope, nope, I am not singing it.”

“C’mon, Lou,” Judy said, poking my side and making me jerk, but there was still that weight to her gaze, still that need for comfort.

“I’ll get you sick.” My voice came out a bare whisper.

“I don’t mind,” she said immediately, and turned on her side and threw a leg over mine.

I searched for the words to make her feel better, desperately rooting through everything I knew, but I had never been much good with them. So, I sang. Judy teased me endlessly for it, but there was no heat behind her words.

We talked about anything and everything to shake the event from our bones. Silly things from our childhood, odd drama I’d missed, more theories about the Greek students. All the same, I could feel it creeping up the back of my neck, a cold clamp, and the shadows in the corner of my vision always watching. The unnerving thought closed in that it was so easy to disappear, to be there one day and gone the next.

Even so, that fear was blotted out by the warmth Judy radiated; from her body, from her smile, voice, and persistent presence. Between one story and the next, I was lulled to sleep.

  
  


That night, I was feeling well enough. I’d left the door unlocked, and Judy had dropped off some bread and water on my desk as she had faithfully through my sickness, this time with a note telling me where she’d be. My stomach settled with the food. Nearly flavorless and easy to swallow, exactly what I needed.

‘ _Want to join the search party? Only if you’re feeling better, or I’ll knock you out,’_ the note opened with. Another painkiller sat on a napkin for me, but I didn’t want to push my luck and get liver damage, or whatever it was the bottles always warned, so I left it alone.

It was snowing outside. Gentle flakes drifting down over everything, dusting finely over the window with frost crawling in from the corners of the pane. The last time I’d been outside, it was nice enough for a sundress and a cardigan, but now I bundled back into my coat and went down to meet Judy and the others.

Mona was just outside my door, hiding her dark hair under a yellow hat. “Is that really you? You’re alive.”

She slung a friendly arm around my shoulder and pecked my cheek, grinning. Her breath had the slightest tinge of alcohol in it, but she seemed steady enough.

“I might still get you sick,” I said, “but hello. _Quelle surprise,_ I think Student Services would have a fit if I was dead. Two cases in one week.”

“Well, that Corcoran business happened last week.”

“Oh, old news by now.”

“Ancient.” Her eyes were bright and persistent, roving over me as if to check for injuries. “Where are you going? Shouldn’t you be resting more.”

“Down to join the search. Do you want to come with?”

Mona wrinkled her freckled nose, considering, and said, “Sure. I was just planning on a short walk though, I’ve gotta get my good coat. See you out there?”

I told her where to find me and continued down the hall, passing familiar faces to murmurs of _glad you’re better,_ and _welcome back!_ Under all the attention, I felt awake, closer to myself again. More people were out and about than I’d ever seen on the campus at one time, maybe besides the big Swing into Spring events, and even then the key word was _maybe._ There were policemen with dogs and Student Services looking all officious, stopping people to talk to them, and a host of people I didn’t recognize: Townies joining the search. Judy had told me it was because of a big reward the Corcorans had offered for those who helped locate Bunny. 

I found Judy with Laura Stora standing around on the front steps of a building covered in sparkling white, Laura jumping up and down with her hands tucked into her armpits and Judy gesticulating to make a point about something. They were bundled up with coats and scarves, Laura’s long blonde hair curling inside her hood, still down, and Judy wearing bright blue snow boots.

“--you’re so damn picky,” I heard Judy saying as I picked my way through a throng of townspeople, who smelled like smoke and beer and some the more pleasant farm scents of petrichor and greenery. “I mean, how much did it cost? I’ll take it if you don’t want it.”

“You can’t be serious,” Laura said. “What if he saw you wearing it?”

“Not for _me,_ for the play.”

“What play?”

“The one I’m costuming in town--I’ve been going out of my mind trying to find something that looks _expensive_ but all the fabric I can afford looks so fucking cheap under their glare-ey lights. I keep telling them to get gels, but--oh! Louise, there you are,” she said to me, snapping out of rant-mode and softening around the edges. Judy grabbed me firmly by the shoulders, pulling me down to eye-level with her. “Are you okay?”

“I feel fine.”

“Mmm, correction, do you feel good?”

“I need the walk,” I said. “I’m tired, but I’ll feel better after.”

“If you say so,” Judy assented, eyes narrowed. Whatever she found in her inspection of me was enough, for she nodded approval and released me. “Now tell Laura she’s crazy for turning down this dress.”

Judy untwisted the mouth of a black plastic garbage bag on the snowy steps between them and drew up a gorgeous red dress by the sleeve; all satin, tulle, and lacey edges.

I gaped. “You’re joking. That’s from James?”

“Yes, but it’s too cold for it, the sleeves are so short,” Laura said.

Judy rolled her eyes and shoved it back in the bag. “It’ll get warmer soon enough. Wasn’t last week so nice?”

“I just don’t like it. And where’s Marion anyway?”

“Already out with the sheriff.”

"And Trace and Beth?" I cut in. They were Judy’s usual choice of company.

"Ugh. Didn't want to come."

“Mona’s gonna be here in a hot minute though."

“Who asked her out?” said Judy rather peevishly.

“ _I_ did. She’s nice, and they need all the people out here possible to look.”

Though Judy wasn’t fond of Mona, she wasn’t exactly _un_ -fond either. Judy got along with anyone willing to talk for more than thirty seconds--making friends in strange places was her specialty, while mine seemed to be getting sick at least four times a year.

“We’re all bunched together anyway, not so much spread out,” Judy settled for saying. “We just walk over the same exact spots as each other, it doesn’t make sense.”

I supposed she was right. Most of the search time was spent getting out to the spot you left off the night before, but she soon found lighting a cigarette more interesting than talking about it. Laura left briefly to haul the bag back to her room, and Judy explained that she’d brought it out here in the first place to throw it out, which I thought was ridiculous. Perhaps I was biased, being someone who’d sewn half my own clothes in high school, but I would’ve at _least_ cut it up to make something or resold it, and I told Judy so.

“Right?” Judy said, and went on to mutter out-of-context details about the play.

It was a solid ten minutes before we had Laura and Mona in one place and moved out, most of the search party already having started across the field hours before and the townies I’d passed long gone. Snow crunched with every step, packed down and browned by countless feet. The cold was getting to me already, stinging my ears, but Judy was quick to throw an extra pair of gloves at my head when I complained about it, telling me to hold my hands over them. 

“Thanks,” I said flatly, but she gave me a bright pink-lipped smile that said she knew I meant it. “How many of these searches have y'all been to?”

“Two,” answered Judy and Laura, while Mona shrugged and said none.

“I hate being all cold and wet.” Mona sank down into the furred collar of her coat, her small frame swamped by it. “And it’s not like I need the reward.”

I opened my mouth to ask her why she came anyway, but Judy sent a sharp elbow into my ribs.

She gave me a meaningful look. “We’re all out here because that Bunny boy was a member of our esteemed student body, and if whatever could happen to him, it could happen to us. Wouldn’t you want all these people looking for you?”

I frowned, confused, but said, “I guess,” even though I severely doubted there’d be such a fuss if his parents hadn’t escalated things. Well. There was a fuss over that farmer, though not nearly so great. I wondered how much of a fuss there’d be if I turned up missing. Likely the same as what Judy had told me in the first days after Bunny’s disappearance. Mere whispers and concerned conversations. Rumors flying.

We finally reached the woods, Judy passing out flashlights kidnapped from security, and descended into the shifting dark. All distant bodies and chatter, beams of light bouncing in varied spots around us. The night itself was still and so, so quiet, everything muffled, the bark of dogs sharp and haunting.

Once the silence had festered, an unusual thing with this company, Mona asked the question on all our minds, “Does anyone have a clue what happened?”

There was something brewing in Judy’s eyes, waiting to slip off her tongue, but she held it back, looking at me. 

“No idea,” I said, when no one answered. “I mean, I was out the whole time. I don’t know what someone would’ve wanted him for, Bunny seemed. . .well-off enough to stay out of trouble. Plenty of things someone might want to sock him for though.”

“What do you mean? He was funny,” Laura said, “at least he didn’t have a stick up his ass all the time like those others.”

Judy pounced on my words, eyes brightening. “Yeah, what do you mean?”

For once, I was cowed by them. It was easy to speak my mind, particularly with Judy, who was so spectacularly blunt, but there were always things I held back for the sake of being somewhat respectable. Attempting to avoid saying something that would get back to someone that I didn’t really mean. That I wouldn’t say to their face.

This was different. What I meant was that he’d made a remark about--and I can’t even repeat the damn word--he’d said something about _gays_ and I’d never forgotten it. Never, never, never. But then there was Francis, obviously gay himself but always around Bunny despite his words, and there was Judy and Laura and Mona, who’d laughed everything off. I was left feeling overly sensitive without being able to help it.

And now my stomach twisted in that familiar way, not sickness or nerves, but a horrible sinking sense. I was burning from the inside out. I said, “Edmund Corcoran was a piece of shit.”

Judy just about laughed her head off at that. Laura recounted a joke he’d told, as if in some strange defense, but it fell flat.

Mona gave me a long, curious look. “No respect for the dead?”

“We don’t know that he is,” I said, in my own strange defense. And then, floundering, “Judy, what do you know about it?”

“By careful cultivation,” she started, in her mock-scholar voice, “I have acquired only the best and most accurate details of the tale.”

Mona giggled. “And?”

“Apparently, Cloke and one of those horror movie twins--”

“Charles, I think,” I supplied her.

“Right. Pasty boy. So they broke into Bunny’s room after all these days when he wouldn’t open it, and there were like, ants crawling over his desk and everything was abandoned. Then Cloke got Marion to come in and see, and she freaked. And basically there was all this expensive stuff in his room--”

“And he went on that big trip to Italy he wouldn’t shut up about,” I said. “Every time I saw him he was prattling on.”

“So it’s suspicious. Exactly. And Cloke’s a big dealer, and apparently he’s being looked into now because where else would Corcoran get all that quick money, right? Because it wasn’t his parents, they say, but I also heard that Bram had some weird convo with Bunny the day before he went missing. He says he didn’t talk to him, but Viv Carter says differently. I don’t know what that all was about, but Bram’s always trying to pawn drugs off people, so.”

She stopped abruptly, squinting ahead of us at some figures in long coats. “That’s them.”

“You mean Bunny’s friends? The Greek class students.” It was hard enough to see in the dark, but I had also failed to bring along my glasses, which I only really bothered with for class. The most I made out was a flash of fiery red hair against the snow, glowing in a beam of light from a huddle yards and yards away. “I think Francis Abernathy’s there.”

“Hmm, I know him,” Laura said. “He’s kinda hot.”

She caught me so off-guard that I choked on my laughter. “ _What.”_

“Yeah, in a vulture way,” said Mona, sounding oddly scandalized.

“As if he’s on the market,” I gasped. Laura stared at me, looking genuinely confused. I laughed some more. “He understands Latin. Keep up, ladies.”

Judy walked faster now, veering our course toward them. “Should we talk to them?”

“And get murdered next?” I snickered. “Maybe they were doing some Greek rites. Sacrifice to the gods!”

Judy kept us going, angled inconspicuously enough that we’d come close to them without seeming like we were marching in their direction. I reached for her sleeve. “Wait, Judy. Really, we shouldn’t bother them.”

“You’re no fun.” She sighed after a moment, angling us away again. “I like that theory though. What even are Greek rites? Like, drinking animal blood?”

“They do look like vampires.” I lowered my voice, still squinting to see even as we passed them. “Maybe Julian locks them in the basement all the time, and they only come out to walk by us and act human.”

“That’s stupid,” Laura said, while Mona said neutrally, “What basement?”

“I don’t know. The general Lyceum.”

Judy said, “And what about Richard? He lives in our dorms.”

“He hadn’t been turned yet.” I held my flashlight under my chin, grinning sharply at her, and sing-songed, “But now he’s joined their ranks. You better sleep with one eye open, he’ll be coming for his first victim soon.” I leapt toward her, raising hands curled to claws. “BOO!”

Mona startled, a quiet sound escaping. Laura stopped in her tracks but otherwise had no reaction. Judy said, “ _Oh. My. God._ I can tell you feel better now.”

“I do, thank you.”

“You’re so silly,” Mona said fondly, something layered beneath her tone, beneath the spark in her eye under the moonlight.

Judy gave me another undecipherable look and said, “You guys walk on for a minute, I’ve got something in my shoe.”

I stopped with her out of habit, while Laura and Mona wandered off slowly. Faintly, I heard the voices of Richard, Francis, and the others, some of which I wasn’t confident I knew the names of. Henry Midwinter--Winter--Winters? _Milly_ I had heard Charles call his sister. I caught a few words, “ _. . .no, stop it. . .” “. . .you’re being loud, Richard, we. . .” “. . .they’re right there.”_

The last hiss gave me pause. I felt gazes burning into me as Judy fiddled with her shoe half-heartedly, adding her own boring stare.

“You don’t really think Bunny was a wastoid, do you?” I asked quietly.

“Hmm?”

“That’s what some people are saying, right? With drugs and alcohol and all, but he was--there’s so many stories.”

“You’re obtuse,” Judy said. She straightened, then, and I realized she’d only made the shoe excuse to steal a moment alone with me. “I didn’t stop to talk about _Bunny.”_ I watched the group shuffle farther away from us, taking all their secrets with them. “So. Mona’s interesting.”

I scoffed. “What?”

“Guess whose skirt she’s trying to get into.”

I stared, wide-eyed and incredulous. “Jesus, do not start.”

“I’m just saying! You might want to let her down easy.”

I shook my head and caved in to her words from earlier, cupping my hands over my ears to warm them. Up ahead, Laura and Mona were giggling like schoolchildren, heads bent together while they kicked up snow and shared some joke I couldn’t make out. I focused my gaze on the glittering snow below, sweeping it back and forth with my boot.

Judy giggled, a shrill sound that meant, _oh, wait, I see._ “Louise Walcot, is there something you’re not telling me?”

“It’s not like. . .okay, Mona has a boyfriend _._ Gag me with a spoon.”

“Hasn’t stopped her from sleeping around.”

“That isn’t right. She _does not_ like me, and even if she did--I’m not interested.”

_Not in her._

Judy eyed me. For a long moment she sized me up, and I did the same. This was the moment we were supposed to dissolve into raucous laughter and go back to join Laura and Mona, but I couldn’t, my face refused to unfreeze from its blank look and my throat fused closed even as I tried to force words up. What words? How could I explain?

It wasn’t as if I thought I was in love with Judy. I’d never been in love with anyone at that point, and it was hard for me to find an interest in anyone. It seemed to be that only after I’d made friends with someone did the possibility of feeling _more_ for them opened up. And Judy was my first friend in college. The first person I’d run into there, in fact, on an early morning college tour in the freezing cold with no one but a tired guide wandering the campus with us.

“I can’t believe you haven’t dated anyone here yet,” she said finally.

I shrugged. “No one made me want to try.”

No random man at a party, no random woman in a class. I didn’t know them well, so I couldn’t bring myself to care, and it didn’t bother me most days. Not dating wasn’t a problem--in fact, it was one less problem. One less commitment. But Judy was already such a large piece of my daily life that it wouldn’t be a change or a distraction.

“Stick to that resolve,” Judy said. “Mona’s more trouble than she’s worth.”

“Yeah,” I agreed awkwardly, managing a smile. “You’re right.”

“Duh. Aren’t I always?”

Judy wove our arms together, tipping into me, and I pushed back, only noticing the tension that had built between us as it melted away. We rejoined Mona and Laura, my thoughts of Bunny’s friends nearly gone until I saw their backs disappearing into the dark. There was something appealing about what they had, a bond so close it was nearly obsessive, always around each other, always in each others’ corners. I had never had that before. A relationship that seemed oath-bound.

_‘See that?’_ Judy’s raised brows asked when Laura made a jab at me and Mona replied insisting I was smart. I didn’t have what Bunny’s friends seemed to, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. If I only ever met with an inner circle, I’d have never had this night and all the other moments with loose friends who had brought me light anyway. Such is the beauty of the world. That a stranger could change your life, that one conversation could change someone else’s. That simple compassion could turn everything upside down. That was what they missed.

“Ms. Stora?”

I turned. Two figures had crept up on us, the crunch of their footsteps unheard beneath all the barely suppressed racket we’d been making. One of them flashed a badge and said, “Can we talk to you for a moment?”

The man who’d spoken before looked at each of us with a curt perceptiveness. Judy asked to see the badge again, and I shone my flashlight on it. Glances were exchanged.

“That’s Laura,” Mona said, shrugging down into her coat, head tilted toward the girl in question.

“You’re not in trouble,” they assured her. _Yet,_ I thought. There were many things to catch Laura on, though she at least seemed to be clean tonight.

“Can we go back now?” Mona asked, half a whine, as they led Laura off.

A pause. I sensed it even then, something off about the whole situation. Something tethering me to that spot, and that moment in time, and that indescribable feeling in my chest of unrest and melancholy and deep down, a sort of fear.

"Yeah," I said. "I could use some hot coffee right about now."

Judy weaved her fingers with mine, our hands stuck into her pocket, and we set off for the dining hall.

We never did find out what happened to Bunny.

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things I thought was so interesting about tsh was the lens through which Richard viewed the world, and how his biases and um. . .lack of observational skills. . . painted every character, large and small. This piece was bouncing around my brain ever since I read Judy's take on the situation, and I finally completed it! I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for sticking with me.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are appreciated! Have a wonderful day, and stay safe! <3


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